Babe Ruth is arguably the best baseball player to ever play the game. He is undoubtedly the most famous. Modern baseball hitters cannot compare to the achievements of Babe Ruth and owe a lot to him and how he changed the way the game is played.
Born George Herman Ruth, he became known as The Sultan of Swat due to his powerful swing and ability to hit a baseball like no one before him, and perhaps no one since. You too can become a sultan in your business like the great Bambino himself, a Sultan of SWOT.
Learn how to use a simple SWOT analysis to drive business growth and core business development.
You might as well hit it out of the park!
Every business owner, manager, or project leader should learn how to use a SWOT analysis as the cornerstone of any annual business review, business plan review, or business strategy planning session. A SWOT analysis is perhaps the simplest, easiest, and most effective (for the money) assessment that you, as a business owner, manager, project leader, or professional, can do to review, update, and ensure that you are following the business plan or roadmap that you have drawn up for yourself. (You have a written business plan and strategic roadmap, right?)
A SWOT analysis promotes proactive thinking and planning rather than the reactive ‘seat of your pants’ or ‘I feel it in my gut’ method of decision making.
What is a SWOT analysis anyway?
A SWOT analysis is essentially a tool for managing change, determining strategic direction, and setting realistic goals and objectives. The process requires an honest review and evaluation of four main components of your business or processes. Simply put, it is a way of laying out the core issues and the resources needed to address them. A SWOT analysis leads to a proactive approach to problem solving versus the all too common reactive approach.
A SWOT analysis begins with an ‘internal’ review of your strengths and weaknesses, the “S” and “W” of the SWOT acronym. It then moves on to a review of external factors, your opportunities and your threats, the “O’s” and “T’s” of the SWOT analysis.
The SWOT process
As mentioned above, a SWOT analysis is very simple, but it requires honesty and rigor. Start with four blank sheets of paper. At the top of each page write the words, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities Y threats.
Strengths
Starting with the title page Strengths.
Identify and write down, in bullet point format, all the strengths of your organization or the particular process you are analyzing.
What are the positive features and value-added components? These could be your products, your customer service, your patents, intellectual property, and/or your employees. When you’re done, evaluate the list and rank them in terms of highest to lowest.
weaknesses
Repeat this same exercise with the page titled weaknesses.
What are your weaknesses? Be honest. NO sugar coating. This analysis is a bowel check. Look in the mirror and without holding back. What are the elements, the processes, the internal deficiencies that are not working well? Are your products old, do you have dead employees, are your systems outdated? Do you suffer from decapitalization?
Again, prioritize from weakest to weakest down.
Opportunities
Move on page titled Opportunities.
This section gets to the real ins and outs of this analysis because it reveals where future growth lies. What are the areas in which you would really like to excel? Do you want to capture more market share? This is where you assess where you can leverage your strengths, your USP (unique selling proposition), your core competencies. Opportunities represent areas where your business could grow, increase profitability, revenue, and market share. Like the others, you’ll prioritize these in terms of best chance to worst.
threats
Finally, let’s move on to the page titled threats.
Write down what the threats are to your business, not just the current ones, but also what you think might emerge as a threat in the future. Threats are often external, such as competitive products and companies, changing demographics, supply chain issues, but they can also be internal, such as the loss of key people or lack of access to capital to drive growth.
For example, if you are a retailer, a big threat could be having a Big Box store open nearby. Or a threat could be if your manager or key employees leave for another company. (This could also be an opportunity to bring new faces into the company or promote from within)
What factors to consider
There are many key factors to consider for each area of the SWOT analysis. Most are core business elements, however each business has unique issues directly related to it. Some of the issues to consider when completing a SWOT analysis include:
Management team
Pole Depth
Experience/Knowledge/Training
operational efficiency
Use of technology
Quality control and other processes
Products/Product Development
Marketing
Distribution Channels/Supply Chain
Online presence/brand
Dirty
financial stability
Taking a SWOT on Babe Ruth
So, let’s use our SWOT analysis technique to assess the career of Babe Ruth, the sultan of SWAT. What were his strengths, his weaknesses, the opportunities he had and the threats he faced?
Babe Ruth’s Strengths
It’s obvious to anyone with limited knowledge of baseball that Babe Ruth’s strength lies in his ability to hit home runs. He was a big man for his time, 6′ 2″ 215 lbs. He capitalized on this in a powerful swing that allowed him to hit the baseball longer distances than anyone before him. He was an accomplished pitcher, even before he changed positions. This understanding of the pitchers’ mindset definitely helped his ability to see or anticipate the pitches being thrown at him.
A little known fact was that Babe Ruth had one of the highest batting averages in all of baseball history. So, he not only hit the ball far, but he hit it well and often. He was able to intimidate the opposing team and pitchers simply with his arrogance, which he backed up with his consistent performance.
Babe Ruth’s Weaknesses
The great Bambino liked to live life in a big way. He had a very extravagant lifestyle off the ball field. He had a very registered weakness for women and for alcohol. He didn’t take very good care of his body, the core force that led him to success.
He was also quite vain. This did not sit well with the baseball owners of the time who wanted to control their star player.
Babe Ruth Opportunities
More than any other player of his day, Babe Ruth created opportunities that didn’t exist before. His fame both on and off the field and his accomplishments generated salaries and benefits never before paid to anyone in the game. Because of his ability to hit the ball, he created opportunities for others on his team to shine, drive in runs and elevate their game. He also gave the owners of the New York Yankees the chance to build a new stadium (the house Ruth built) and win more World Series titles than they could have imagined.
Babe Ruth Threats
Due to his tremendous hitting skills, there was always the threat that opposing teams would not throw pitches at him to hit. He was walked more than anyone at that time. No intentional walk statistics were kept then, but it stands to reason that many of his walks were on purpose to limit the damage he could have done while hitting. Babe was also a threat to himself. His womanizing led to an unhealthy life and venereal disease. His drinking and lack of discipline from him off the baseball diamond led to a sharp decline in his baseball skills and a diminished longevity of his career. In fact, he passed away at the young age of 53.
We have used the SWAT analysis of Babe Ruth, the Sultan of SWAT, to reveal how this simple but penetrating analysis can be performed not only on a business in general, but also on specific processes and even people and careers.